


Flames

by Artrix



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 16:17:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11535879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artrix/pseuds/Artrix
Summary: Trevor is burdened with the memory of flames.





	Flames

Trevor was starving.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t hunt, it was that he couldn’t cook.

Not for lack of skill; he’d learned years ago how to handle fresh meat. The killing wasn’t what bothered him, not when he’d seen so much death in his life. Not when he’d been responsible for so much death.

It was the smell of the fire.

When he was younger, he’d always liked the smell of smoke and wood. Mostly, because it reminded him of the nights when he could curl up on the rug in front of the fireplace back home. It was ritual almost; after dinner he’d always wind up there. A full stomach was enough to warrant a nap, and even at a young age, he’d been an active child. He’d been a bit of a schemer, too; his father was not an affectionate man and yet, when he was small and fragile, Trevor had craved his affection.

His mother was responsible for it; she’d coddled him, according to his father. But Trevor was too young to think there was anything shameful about enjoying attention from your mother, and he wanted reassurance that his father loved him as much as she did.

If he went to sleep on the rug, his father had to pick him up to cart him off to bed—and if that was the only way he could get his father to embrace him, that was what he would do.

His father was a strong man, with broad arms and a barrel chest. He was tall and imposing, but Trevor liked that about him. There was nothing scary about his father, unless he was mad.

It was hard to be afraid of his father when he knew what monsters looked like, and he knew his father fought them, like his father’s father, and his father before him, and so on.

One day, Trevor would fight them too, but back then he hadn’t been brave. He’d seen the monsters skulking in the woods, he remembered the sound of glass shattering when they broke into the house. 

It only happened once, but he remembered the white of its teeth, and the red of his blood as fang met flesh. The memory of the pain had faded; he might have even passed out. But still, he remembered the sound of his father charging across the wooden floors, and the sound of the whip cracking.

The sound of the monster screaming before it burned away into nothingness.

It was the only time he could remember his father willingly drawing him up into his arms and holding him tightly.

Trevor had been afraid back then, but his father had always made him feel safe. He couldn’t be blamed for wanting the attention, the security.

He would never admit it now, of course. He tried to burn the thought from his mind like the townspeople tried to burn his house from the Earth.

Only, they had succeeded and he still failed.

The smell of smoke and the sound of crackling wood filled him with a cold rage. He’d been sick to his stomach more times than he cared to admit, just by staring into the dancing flames of a campfire.

He made excuses for himself, because that was easier than admitting how deep the feelings of betrayal had cut him.

He told himself that a fire in the night would attract the things he hunted and that he was smartest to conceal himself in the shadows. 

The truth was simply that the flames transfixed him. They drew him back to a place where he no longer felt safe; instead, he felt weak, helpless.

As his house burned, he had been restrained by two men—two men he had known since childhood. Two men he’d known his whole life. Two men he’d thought were friends to his family.

Two human men.

Not superpowered monsters, not creatures of the night with enhanced strength and durability.

Two fucking humans, not so different than he. Only, they didn’t have his training.

And still, he couldn’t save the house. Or anything, that night.

It was cold tonight; he was sitting in a small clearing a few distant yards from a well traveled road. The only light was the pale streams of moonlight that flickered through the web of branches and leaves above him. He couldn’t see much but the flask in front of him.

He couldn’t have fire, but he needed warmth, and even his cloak provided only so much.

He was cold on the inside.

But whiskey burned on the way down.

His flask was nearly empty; it was one of the few trinkets he’d salvaged from the ashes. It was filthy and warped from the fire. The family crest was defiled in the same way their name had been, but Trevor kept it all the same.

They were relics, each. Scarred and discarded and useful only for holding alcohol.

He had been reduced to this, to a failing structure of a man. He had once stood tall and proud; he deserved the Belmont name. He had once been filled with resolve and joy and happy memories, but now there were only ashes.

Like the house.

He would not have a fire of his own, not tonight. When he closed his eyes, he only saw flames. He heard the crackling of wood as his home collapsed on itself.

He heard the screams of his parents as the fire ate them alive.

The payment for their protection, apparently, was death.

Despite generations spent protecting the townspeople, in the end it had meant nothing. They had been all too quick to turn on the Belmont family, to assault them in the early morning hours while they slept.

They hadn’t even had the decency to kill his parents then, only incapacitate them.

Their death was painful, and their screams haunted him. Worse, the silence after their screams haunted him.

It was no act of mercy that he had been allowed to live; he had simply arrived too late for them to lock him in the house before the flames consumed it. He had been tracking a monster—one he never found—when the wall of red lit up the sky. He’d run home, fearing some accident, or monster, at worst.

But he hadn’t expected _them_.

Rage brought him to life; he saw the way they all stared at the flames. Some were still holding torches, as if they expected the roaring wall of fire to suddenly die and they’d be there to rekindle it. The group had come armed. It had not taken him long to understand what had happened. He tried to charge past them, elbows and punches flying just to clear a path.

They would not let him pass. They subdued him, but they did not kill him.

Perhaps they were just so eager to see the pain in his eyes that they let him live. Like they needed to see him suffer to make any of this count.

The only members of the church he had ever spoken with seemed the sort, poisoned with power and self-righteousness. They had enjoyed looking down at him as he was shoved into the ground by his _friends_. They had enjoyed telling him that this was his own fault. That his family had brought this on themselves, that they were evil and that all evil must be _purged_.

Trevor fought evil. Willingly, back then. He had looked evil in the eye. Demons, vampires, all sorts of creatures of the night.

He knew evil.

And yet, no beast, no monster, had ever reeked of such evil as that of the men before him.

When the flames began to die, they beat him. Revenge, perhaps, for his initial assault on the crowd. His weapons were stripped and discarded somewhere in the darkness. He remembered fists and boots and sticks.

And the faces of the people his family had protected.

When he’d come to, he awoke to glowing embers and smoke, and crumbling wood.

Nothing was left. He searched for his parents, for any remain of them, until dawn, but he found nothing of them to bury so they received no formal service. 

As if the church would have allowed it, anyway.

He hadn’t been able to leave. He’d collapsed in the ash and destruction and sat there, staring at the life he used to know. 

Days after the fire had faded, the area still smelled of smoke. It choked him, it burned him. It poisoned him.

Starving, drained, and empty inside, he left.

But the smell of smoke followed him.

He would rather starve than hear the crackle of wood, or smell the smoke, or be reminded of the white hot flames that consumed everything he’d ever loved.

The alcohol was the only warmth he needed.

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the tree he’d designated his bed for tonight and took one final swig before sealing up the flask and tucking it away.

He just wanted to sleep without dreaming of flames and screams and betrayal.

The alcohol didn’t help that night, so he dragged himself into town and had twice as much for breakfast.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This was just a warmup; I really want to get into writing some more detailed fanfiction but I'm a little out of practice. I have a few things I want to write, but I'm also looking to take some requests in the meantime! If you have any requests, please check out my profile for information!


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